大象传媒

Shani Rhys James is interviewed by Kim Howells in her studio, intercut with images of the artist's work both around the studio and as still photographs. She is introduced as Wales' best-known female artist, born in Australia to a Welsh father who came to Wales to work in the 1980s. They discuss how she often uses her own face as a frequently disconcerting image, though she doesn't think of it as her head and uses it in an attempt to get beyond a mask that people put up, especially women, who feel pressured to be beautiful and to be perfect. For Kim Howells, more than anyone he knows, she is an artist who uses signature colours and a limited palette. Shani feels that red is a powerful, primal colour, and uses it because her paintings are about contact, power and showing how strongly she feels things. She creates paintings to make people question themselves. Discussing the image of a child in a cot that she has painted, she explains that it is a metaphor and a symbol of a human condition about how we treat children - a little spirit, open, receptive, with a right to their existence and as much a human being as an adult.